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NEW DELHI: The Manmohan Singh-Barack Obama meeting in London on April 2 will probably be the most important engagement the UPA government is
preparing for at present. Not only will it be the first between the two leaders, the very fact that it will also be the last meeting of Singh in this government will make it particularly unique.
On the one hand, the two countries are keen to get ahead with the relationship. Foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon worked the `Obamis' just as thoroughly as he had worked the `Bushies' during his recent tour of the Beltway. And despite the fact that Hillary Clinton's decision to overfly India to visit China caused some wrinkles on many foreheads, the new pithy description of the US-India relationship is a "global standalone strategic partnership".
The Manmohan-Obama meeting will have a lot of expectations but both sides will be acutely aware that Indian elections are nigh. This means while a `personal chemistry' between the two men will be sought keenly, both sides will want to keep some space for the next Indian prime minister to work out his/her own relationship with Obama that is independent of the Singh factor.
Besides, Singh had a particularly special relationship with George Bush, which both sides will want transferred to Obama. This may be a constraint, but officials are insistent that this would not affect the meeting or its agenda. There is no clarity yet on whether there would be a joint statement after the meeting.
The economic crisis will dominate both in the multilateral and bilateral spheres. Here, the PM will be in his element as this is his core competency. He has been a strong advocate of the various stimulus packages but equally would like the current packages to show results before plunging into the next set of interventionist policies.
A lot of the conversation will be devoted to Obama's newly minted `Af-Pak' strategy. In many ways, India is not unhappy about the formulation of the strategy, though ideally Obama should at least have referred to the Mumbai terror attacks and refrained from his "constructive diplomacy" line.
But India has decided to run with the positive aspects of the review, particularly the focus on Pakistan, getting Pakistan to act against the Taliban and al-Qaida, conditioning aid to Pakistan etc. India will be part of the "contact group" which is basically a group of Pakistan-Afghanistan's neighbours who will be involved in the attempt to keep the extremism "cancer" inside Pakistan from infecting them. India is also satisfied that its harangue for years that Iran should be included in a resolution strategy has finally seen light in Washington.
Having said this, there are reservations about the prospects of success of this strategy in India. According to Indian analysts, the core of any Af-Pak strategy should be to get the Pakistani military-intelligence complex to reverse their support to the Taliban and al-Qaida. Until there is a definite strategy for that to happen, the "cancer" is unlikely to be eradicated.
That, as Indians and Americans well know, is the most difficult part of the strategy.
India considers this meeting to be crucial, because the language of this meeting will percolate down the system in Washington and will deeply influence the way India and the US interact with each other in future. 
